Quick Stats: Dominick Cruz UFC Bantamweight champ
Daily Driver: 2015 Toyota Tundra (Dominic’s rating: 9 on a scale of 1 to 10)
Other cars: see below
Favorite road trip: San Diego to Los Angeles
Car he learned to drive in: 1998 Eagle Talon
First car bought: 1985 Ford Escort
When UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz isn’t in the octagon or preparing to defend his title in his fight against longtime rival Uriah Faber on June 4 in Los Angeles, the avid car lover is dominating San Diego freeways in his 2012 Nissan GT-R.
The supercar was a bonus “The Dominator” received when he won his UFC title against Demetrious Johnson. While he doesn’t let it go to waste languishing in the garage (he has taken it to the track once when he drove to Vegas), Cruz does mindfully drive his cherished prize, which he always makes time to enjoy.
“I’m a big car guy, and I wanted a car that was going to give me high performance and could beat anything on the road,” Cruz says. “Everybody who has a lot of money and success wants to flaunt a fancy pants. I know the performance of a GT-R will beat all those cars, so that’s what I want. The way I look at it is, it’s a car that the only real car heads know what it is, and also it’s a sleeper.
“The guys that drive Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bentley GTs, it’s because they want to flaunt the fancy car and get the girls and stuff. I wanted this car because it’s a high performance; it’s a sports vehicle that will beat the pants off of all these cars and you’ll never know what it was.”
Of all the cars he asked for, Cruz specifically wanted the GT-R for its exclusivity. “You see more of them in California, but I don’t see a lot of them. I consider it my street toy, and I drive it on the weekends usually,” he says. “I like it because I change the fuel setting on it. That car has got over 700 hp. I can change the fuel on it from 100 octane to 91 or E85.”
He gives his fun ride a perfect 10. “You can change the suspension on it to be tight or comfortable. It’s a beast more than anything, but I like to take care of it. I like to drive it really hard, so I try not to drive it except on the weekends,” he says
This car enthusiast also knows the best times to hit the road in a GT-R around San Diego. “After you live here for a while, you know the times to drive and the times not to, and you’ve just got to skip rush hour,” he says, with a laugh. “If you’re in rush hour you’re at a standstill, but anytime between 10 to 1 o’clock, you’re good to drive.”
Sometimes he drives to Escondido just for fun. Other times it’s simply to cruise without a destination in mind. “And then taking it to track too sometimes is fun,” he says. “I haven’t gotten to do that in a while because I’ve been so busy, but that’s something that I definitely am going to get into more after the fight.”
For his daily drivers, Cruz switches between a 2015 Toyota Tundra and 2009 Honda Civic Si.
2015 Toyota Tundra Platinum edition
Rating: 9
“It’s like driving around in a couch. I’ve got a good custom suspension on it too that Toyota Escondido hooked me up with, and it’s all leather interior,” he says. “It’s a great truck. It’s very efficient.”
The automatic Tundra is great for when Cruz needs to tow things. “I like that I can do so many things with it. I like to tow things; I like to go to the dunes; I like to go to the desert; I like to camp,” he says. “I like to throw a camper on it. If I ever need to haul stuff, I can haul stuff. It’s got four doors, so it’s roomy if I need to drive around with people. There’s really nothing I dislike about this truck to be perfectly honest. I love it.”
2009 Honda Civic Si
Rating: 8
The six-speed Honda Civic Si was the first new car Cruz bought. “I just won a big fight and I needed something that wasn’t going to break on me, that the AC was always going to work, and everything on it was going to work and never
break down, and so I got the Honda and it’s worked out great,” he says.
Cruz had to string together the prize money from three fights when he was in the WEC to buy the Honda. He put down an $8,000 down payment and now owns it. “It was a cheaper car that I knew was going to be economical, and I knew that it was going to last me, it wasn’t going to break on me, and that was my biggest concern at that point in my life,” he says. “I love the efficiency of it. If it breaks it’s cheap to get parts for it and to fix it. It’s four-cylinder, so it’s easy on gas and fuel efficiency, it’s a six-speed, so on the freeway it’s good for long distance too.”
Despite having an appreciation for cars, Cruz is always careful about how he spends his money. “Being a prize fighter there’s not a whole lot of stability in that line of work,” he says. “I wanted to make sure I had something that I could afford at that time. Fighting wasn’t paying a whole lot of money at that particular moment in my life, so it was the smart choice.”
Cruz will always have a car in his garage that has a manual transmission. “I’ve never not owned a stick shift,” he says. “There’s something about manual transmissions that I really appreciate and enjoy. And besides that I like driving, I enjoy driving.”
Cruz loves driving so much that he hopes to go into auto racing one day. “When I’m done fighting, I want to look to get some sort of driving career somewhere. My goal is to eventually into the Mint 400 and do the trophy truck stuff. I know Vaughn [Gittin] Junior pretty well. I want to get to working with him, start learning how to drift. It’s just a hobby, and I enjoy doing it.”
Despite reaching the top of his profession, Cruz hasn’t splurged on a car with his own money. “I’ll be honest, the only car I’ve ever spent money on is my Honda Civic. I bought it brand new and I bought it for under $20,000 because it’s economical,” he says. “… I’m a prize fighter and you only get paid when you fight so I’ve never spent money on any of my cars.”
Car he learned to drive in
Cruz grew up in Tucson, Arizona, and a high school friend who had a car taught him to drive in parking lots around town. “It was a Talon,” he says, with a laugh. “An old-school Talon. It looked a lot like an Eclipse. It was a stick shift, and I always grew up liking driving. It was front-wheel drive, it was a little bit easier to control, a little four-cylinder. He had the exhaust, intake, the headers, all that stuff, and it was just a fun little car. Once I learned how to drive stick shift on that, I always owned a stick shift from there on out.”
Since Cruz didn’t have a car in high school, he didn’t start driving until after he graduated and was able to buy a manual 1985 Ford Escort.
“I called her Blue Lightning. It was my mom’s hand-me-down car that she had and I bought it from her for $250. It was light blue and it was a junker, but it got the job done. It got me from point A to point B, and it was a stick shift. I worked as a landscaper at Triple A Landscaping,” he says, with a laugh. “I didn’t grow up with a lot of money so my mom didn’t have random money to buy me a car and I didn’t have money to have a car unless I worked, so I didn’t get a car until I got my first job at 18.”
Although his mom could have given the Escort to Cruz, she used it as a teaching tool for her son. “My mom’s a very tough cookie, I’ll tell you that right now, and she knew that nothing in life is free so she wasn’t going to give me a car for free,” he says. “I was pissed off; I was mad. I was like, ‘Mom, you’re going to make me buy this thing? It’s got 250,000 miles on it. It can barely even move!’ She’s like, ‘Well if you want a car.’ Of course I paid for it because it’s all I could afford. I was making $6.50 an hour as a landscaper.”
Favorite road trip
Cruz likes driving up the California coast in his GT-R. “The drive up the coast to L.A. is beautiful; I love that one. I make time; I love driving,” he says. “That’s my play car, so I’ll get in my GT-R on Friday, as long as it’s a beautiful sunny day, and I’ll drive it all day Friday, all day Saturday, and usually all day Sunday. I’ll just bob around San Diego, or make a trip up north to L.A. I love driving it.”
Sometimes Cruz also drives it to Los Angeles for work as well, since he’s also an analyst on Fox Sports. He also enjoys taking the GT-R to Vegas for an annual fan fighter expo to meet fans. “That was fun. I could hit a pretty good speed on there, but I won’t talk about it because I don’t want to get arrested,” he says, with a laugh. “The trip to Vegas is fun. You have to hit that freedom from traffic from 10 in morning till 1 p.m. If you hit that you won’t hit any traffic, but anytime in between or after that you’re screwed.”
UFC 199 fight on June 4 in Inglewood
Cruz started wrestling in junior high and continued in high school. After high school, he started boxing and had his first mixed martial arts fight at 19, eventually finding his way to the UFC.
Cruz vs. Faber is the UFC 199 co-main event at the Forum in Inglewood, Calif., on June 4, with the main event Luke Rockhold vs. Michael Bisping. In the five-round bantamweight championship trilogy bout, Cruz will defend his title against longtime nemesis and No. 3-ranked Faber (a former Celeb Drive).
Faber hopes to capture UFC gold for the first time, but Cruz is prepared. “We fought twice; this is the rubber match. We don’t like each other, we don’t get along, and I’m looking forward to beating him and retaining my world title,” he says. “There’s no fun about fighting somebody; it’s not a game. I’m not friends with him at all. I train to be the best in the world, always. I’m the world title; I hold the title. I’m the champion of the division, so he has to adjust to me.”
For more information about UFC 199 on June 4, please visit ufc.com
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